The Green New Deal’s war on fossil fuels: Democrats are split on the real nuclear option | Mulshine

Posted Apr 09, 2019

The Oyster Creek Generation Station in Lacey Township: If the environmentalists were serious about generating carbon-free electricity they would have campaigned to keep the plant from shutting down last year. (Michael Mancuso | For NJ.com)

The New York Democrat’s plan calls for the U.S. to engage in a “10-year national mobilization” that would require “meeting 100 percent of the energy demand in America through clean, renewable, and zero-emissions power sources.”

If that’s the goal the Democrats embrace, then they’re going to need a heck of a lot of nuclear plants. The Green New Deal doesn’t mention nuclear. But Troy Singleton does.

Singleton is a Democratic state senator from Burlington County who serves on the Budget Committee. Last week the budget for the state Department of Environmental Protection was up for review. That made the department’s representatives a captive audience for Singleton, so he gave them a lecture on nuclear power.

Singleton pointed out that almost 40 percent of the state’s electricity comes from nuclear power, and that all that power comes with no carbon emissions. That makes nuclear indispensable if New Jersey is ever to achieve its goals for reducing its carbon footprint, he said.

“We’d be fooling ourselves if we think we can get to our goals by taking this off the grid,” he said of nuclear energy. “You can’t achieve a clean energy portfolio while taking away the thing with zero carbon footprint at the same time.”

No, you can’t – at least not if you can do math.

When the Oyster Creek nuclear plant in Ocean County closed down recently, that removed about 600 megawatts of capacity from the state’s stock of carbon-free energy.

Opponents of nuclear insist we can replace that with such technologies as wind energy. The big pilot project at the moment calls for installing six windmills off Atlantic City.

That’s nice, but you’d need to build 25 such projects to equal just the output lost when Oyster Creek shut down. That would require a $5 billion subsidy. And then we’d just be back to where we were when Oyster Creek was still running.

The situation with solar isn’t much different. We’d have to almost double our current solar capacity, again with massive subsidies, just to replace the carbon-free capacity lost when Oyster Creek closed.

But New Jersey already has some of the highest electricity rates in the country. Rate hikes big enough to subsidize the replacement of nuclear power with wind and solar would finish off the state’s economy, which is already on life support.

Here we come to a rift between the old-time Democrats and the new wave ideologues like AOC and her crowd.

Both Singleton and his fellow Democrat, Senate President Steve Sweeney, work as representatives for construction unions in their day jobs.

Unlike the members of public-sector unions, who keep getting paid regardless of how the economy is doing, private-sector union members rely on a healthy economy to provide them with jobs.

Sweeney is also a big backer of nuclear plants, which provide plenty of jobs for his fellow Gloucester County residents. He recently got through the Legislature a bill that permits the state Board of Public Utilities to offer subsidies to nuclear plants in the event their profitability is threatened by low-cost natural gas.

One Republican state senator who serves on the committee, Steve Oroho of Sussex County, said that if one form of carbon-free power generation is subsidized, then the same should hold for another.

“The concern I had when I supported the bill was how much is it going to cost if we don’t have nuclear,” said Oroho.

When it comes to alternatives such as solar, he said, the state is already overrun with those massive arrays of solar panels.

“On my drive down through the countryside to Trenton, I can count at least 10 good-sized solar fields where there used to be cornfields,” Oroho said. “That nice green open space in what was the Garden State has now been turned into steel-framed, black-panel acreage.”

Meanwhile those three nuclear plants on the Delaware River occupy relatively little space while cranking out the lion’s share of the state’s electricity. When it comes to getting rid of them, “I don’t know how mathematically you could ever do it,” Oroho said.

Neither do the people who are calling for simultaneously eliminating fossil fuels and nukes. Yet they are the loudest voices in the party as we move into the 2020 presidential election.

The Democrats don’t listen to me. But if they did, I’d advise them that if they want to beat Trump they ought to nominate someone with views more like those of Singleton and Sweeney than those of AOC and the others who’ve endorsed her Green New Deal.

If not, they’d better start readying their excuses for when Trump wins a second term.

ADD - DRIVE THAT NEW CAR TO THE JUNKYARD IN A MERE 10 YEARS?

Democratic presidential contenders have been so busy lining up behind the Green New Deal that they haven’t thought of the attack ads it will generate.

If the Deal’s terms are taken literally, you will no longer be able to buy gasoline as of 10 years from now, when all fossil fuels are banned. In other words, if you go buy a new car tomorrow you have to accept that it goes into the car cruncher by 2030.

That’s nuts. Heck my sports car is going on 20 years old and it still runs great. Imagine if I had to take it to the junkyard back in 2009.

There is so much silly, childish nonsense in the Green New Deal that the attack ads practically write themselves.

That will save energy - for the Republican campaign consultants.

Also, check the state’s energy profile on the Energy Information Administration site. You will see that wind and solar make up just a small portion of the state’s energy profile. The national Democrats would be wise to support Sweeney’s “all of the above” philosophy instead of the radical environmentalism of AOC. He supports wind and solar but also supports nuclear and natural gas, which can replace coal. That’s how a grown-up views this sort of thing. AOC’s position is just plain childish.

Note to readers: if you purchase something through one of our affiliate links we may earn a commission.